Fodor's may use your e-mail address to send you relevant information on site updates, account changes, and offers. For more information about your privacy and protection, please review our full Privacy Policy.

Just back Mara Ruaha Katavi Mahale

Hi,
I am just back today from almost a month away. It will take me a long time to get an informational trip report ready, but I have lots of info. If anybody is thinking about planning a trip to these places, or just has questions, I would be happy to answer anything. I was at:

I've always had Serian camp very high on my list of places to get to. Very curious to hear your experiences ....... in terms of game drives, guiding, crowds at sightings, cheetah if any you came across! Thanks

And oh! i hear only good things about Rekero also. The combination must be superb?

One thing that is important to remember is that I don't have much to compare these camps to as this was my only trip to Africa. And Serian was our first, and you know what they say about 'firsts'....With that said, Serian really is a top notch camp, and a beautiful place. Very laid back place, very rustic in it's tents and location and amenities(none, really), but really classy and luxurious in so many ways. The bathroom suite(in a separate hut next to each tent)is really beautiful, with a huge stone bathtub overlooking the river, a shower built into a tree, and a completely open floorplan and open front so you are facing the river whatever you are doing at the time. The dining tent is really special; it is very cosy and intimate, with a fireplace and couches at one end for drinks, and a
dining table on the other end, so you sit and eat dinner with the fire roaring and good conversation/company. All liquor is also included; I happen to find the all-inclusive very classy, as no bill arrives on the last day to turn things from a personal experience into a business one.
In terms of the game drives, it is impossible to overestimate the experience of having one's own guide and vehicle. I mostly had my own vehicle throughout the trip, but on two occasions on my trip I shared one, and would have been miserable if I had had to do that the whole time, with regards to the personalities of some of the people I rode with and the need to compromise my own desires of what to see and how to do it with the needs of the group. Of course, if you really hit it off with some people and have the exact same itinerary desires, the company can provide nice conversation between sightings and additional insight and fun, but if it does not work out that can be rough. My experience with my guide and driver for 4 nights at Serian was priceless, they were two very special people and we became very close. The drives themselves were great. Two nights we were up around Serian; it is not a huge area that they use up there, but it was heavily inhabited by wildies, zebra, giraffe, elephant, hyena, lions, jackals, buffalo, gazelles, etc.; we saw plenty of each every day. It was the first two days of our trip, so we got up at 6am, and drove from 7am to 7pm, eating lunch out everyday. We really worked our guides, and continued to do so when we flycamped inside the Mara, but they were great and happy to do it!! Then they took us to the flycamp in the Mara and stayed there with us, which was a great experience. The guiding was great, our Masai guide had only been out of the school for a year I think. He grew up traditional Masai, so obviously knew the land and the animals pretty well to begin with; I don't think he was the greatest guide in terms of actually knowing all of the facts about the animals, but in terms of finding them, doing everything we wanted happily, and sharing with us his history and culture and asking us about ours, he was perfect
for us. The only time we saw any other cars, really, was at two mating lions in the middle of one day, there were probably 6 cars there and I told them to just drive by and not to stop. Otherwise the only thing we ever shared was lion cubs with a photographer who was parked for the entire day where the cubs were hidden taking shots for a project. I don't think we saw any cheetah near Serian, but saw many once we went down to the Mara, including a kill of a baby thompson. We really felt isolated up by camp, there was nobody else around.
The food, which was not really important to us when planning the trip, was superb, better than we find at most Manhattan restaurants. Alex Walker, the owner and host, is an interesting guy, he ate all of our meals with us and made very good conversation about all kinds of topics, he makes you feel like a welcome guest in what is basically his house.
Whew...that was a lot!! Rekero is also a great camp, with a great location and a great management team. I think Serian is a little more special, more intimate(it may actually be a bigger camp, as they have more tents on the other side of the river now, with their own dining facilities, I did not go over there to see it, but Serian 'felt' smaller and more personal), and more beautiful, but we are only talking about minor degrees here. Rekero has access to a much larger area, being in the Mara; driving from Serian to the park for crossings is a long prospect, passing through a lot of Masai country with cattle everywhere; I would not want to stay up at Serian if I was driving to the park everyday, I would stay up there and then come down to the flycamp or the mobile camp or to Rekero for the crossings/park experience.
My guides at Rekero were far more experienced than my guide at Serian, but really had no personality, they were very professional, and had great knowledge, but that was it, which might be fine for most, but after the closeness we developed at Serian, it was hard to get used to the new relationship(or lack of). Also, private vehicles are extra and sometimes hard to get when camp is busy, and we got put with another client who was excruciating to be with.
Either way you cut it, these are two class A camps as far as tented camps go.

I pretty much figured out after extensive research where I wanted to go, then I booked it through David Barker of Authentic Tanzania in Dar Es Salaam. He is very knowledgeable and VERY patient, and really helped me with the routing logistics and air travel. I added the Kenya portion as an afterthought, really, and Eben of Kiliwarriors booked that for me and also advised me a lot as I did not really research Kenya that much. David only handles Tanzania, Eben handles and knows countries, and both did a great job.
There were no mishaps worth mentioning as any that happened were very minor. Flights ran very smoothly in African terms, meaning that it was not always the same airline I was originally supposed to be on and the travel times changed by a few hours every now and then, but each camp I dealt with made sure I was where I needed to be when I needed to be there and that I got to wherever I was trying to get to with no real changes to the itinerary. There are several different flight options in place now, going in both directions; from east to south to west and back east again, or from east to west to south and back east again, depending whose camps you are using, so it should not be any problem organizing this trip if you have some flexibility.
Again, no flight connection problems, just keep in mind this is not JFK you are dealing with(not that JFK does it any better, just a little more formally and officiously). I packed VERY light, came out to about 28lbs between a small backpack and a duffel bag. Everywhere I went had laundry service, so I could have even gotten by with less than I brought, which is hard to imagine, but if it rains or is cold, you cannot get laundry done as they just throw everything in a tub and then hang it to dry, and unless it is hot and sunny it won't dry, and then you could have a problem. But I took 1 pair of shorts, 2 pairs of convertible pants, 4 tee-shirts, 2 long sleeve t-shirts(one of which I gave to my guide in Kenya at the very beginning of the trip), 1 sweatshirt, 4 socks/4 underwear, 1 hat hiking shoes for everyday and hiking sandals for around the camp or if something happened to my hiking shoes. Then the basic toiletries, camera equipment, and that was really it.
Chimps...they were quite close to camp everyday; the trek was never more than 1 hour, but I heard stories of people hiking for 8 or 10 hours and coming back without a sighting. It was a nice slow paced climb, but really did get quite steep going up and down riverbanks and hills, and rocky with loose terrain at times, I was surprised that it was so hard, but the manager said they have several different routes to get people up if necessary, so there are probably smoother, less steep ways to go that would just take a lot longer. It was pretty hot and muggy in the hills, and when you are with the chimps you wear a surgical mask, which makes it tough to breathe and fogs up your glasses, but it is all fine, I wore my convertible pants and a short sleeve tshirt. Down on the beach it was much cooler, though still sunny and hot, and very comfortable at night for sleeping.

We think we saw you in Katavi swatting Tsetse!, and again at Mahale airstrip when you arrived from Katavi with JP.
Glad to here you had such good luck at Mahale our visit was ruined by the presence of the camp designer and her photographer.

Howdy,
Here are some pics of my recent trip. Sorry for the personal photos at the beginning, but I made the album for family, and did not feel like making another, as I have been spending countless hours making a movie, which I finally finished!! Anyhoo, enjoy them, and if you have any questions about where things were shot, just ask!!
thanks

Thanks a lot everybody; I see such beautiful pictures from so many posters here that I was almost not going to post, as I thought I had nothing to offer. I did not really feel that I used the light effectively(although I really learned a lot over the course of the trip regarding angles and times of day to shoot!!), and I felt my exposures were off and that I really needed a longer/faster lens to get clearer shots. But I did feel that a lot of my compositions were good, and that I had some off-beat and interesting shots, so I went for it, and I really appreciate the positive feedback. Plus I enjoy looking at other people's photos, even when they are not that good technically, so I figured what the heck.
Cybor, I posted some information under this thread:http://www.fodors.com/forums/threadselect.jsp?fid=4&tid=35077919

I probably should have posted the photos to that thread to keep everything together.
I kept a journal, not really for day to day and minute by minute sightings and doings, but for informational things so that I could be of help with people who are interested in the camps/parks I saw, so any questions anyone has, please ask away.

I wrote a lot about the Mara camps; Ruaha was far and away my favorite park and favorite overall experience. Flycamping for 4 nights was an incredibly intimate and special experience with regards to feeling part of the scene as opposed to being a spectator. Nobody around except our host, and the camp staff which set up their tents about 75 yards away, so we never even knew they were there. Loved the bucket shower and even the drop toilet just sitting out there in the woods, and going to bed on a tiny bedroll on the ground in a tiny dome tent listening to every crackle right outside. Ruaha is a rough and rugged place, incredibly beautiful and dry, with many different landscapes which constantly change, from dried up river beds to small plains to steep mountain passes to river oasis, with a wild variety of trees, from the stunning and twisted baobab to the sausage tree to the palm tree....yeah, palm trees!! wild. The animals were in abundance, and when you came across them, they were in big groups; rarely did we see 1 or 2 lions, it was always 12 or 14, same thing with elephants and giraffe. The animals are not surrounding you like in the Mara, they take more work to find, but when you find them it is in a beautiful scene, and you are all alone, and every sighting feels so special. The two hour flight from Arusha is a breeze and they operate regularly, so it is not hard at all to get to Ruaha.

We had a leopard staying just at the edge of our flycamp for our entire stay, and a huge bull elephant came to camp one day and stood eating 30 yards away from where we were sitting; having an elephant in a camp like that where we had nowhere to run or hide except behind a tree is really exhilarating. Except, of course, when my father in law got too close trying to take a snapshot and the elephant burst out of the trees trumpeting and stamping his feet. Luckily it was just a false charge, because he was so close that if had not stopped he was already on us. That was kind of scary!!

Author: thit_cho
Date: 11/01/2007, 11:44 am

Thanks, those are great.

The lion posing on the rock looks like a postcard.

Author: going_2_africa
Date: 11/01/2007, 12:13 pm

Thanks for sharing your photos. I'm glad you decided to. You have some really great shots.

Author: cw
Date: 11/01/2007, 12:19 pm

Loved your photos. Thanks for posting them. The hippos and the crocs are amazing. You have some really good pictures.

CW

Author: schlegal1
Date: 11/01/2007, 12:51 pm

Great photos! I always enjoy photos and yours were delightful.

Could you please re-post with spaces between the place names in your title--it's messing up the left scroll-bar. After you re-port, let this one sink past the first 50.

You certainly do have something to offer. Some great lion shots on the rocks, in the sunset, nursing. The partially submerged croc was fascinating. You had one landscape/sunset shot that looked like it was painted with primary colors! Nice photos of the chimps at Mahale.

It's (the other posting about pictures) not going to get fixed unless: a) a Fodors editor corrects the problem, (any editor awake out there???), b) people stop replying to the post so that it sinks below the 50 subject count column. Otherwise, very simply, a new reply puts the original back on top where the super long subject line keeps messing up the left column. Happens now and then.